Charter for Working Group

The objective of this group is to decide how to best address knownproblems in existing implementations of the current TCP standard(s) andpractices. The overall goal is to improve conditions in the existingInternet by enhancing the quality of current TCP/IP implementations. Itis hoped that both performance and correctness issues can be resolvedby making implementors aware of the problems and their solutions. Inthe long term, it is felt that this will provide a reduction inunnecessary traffic on the network, the rate of connection failures dueto protocol errors, and load on network servers due to time spentprocessing both unsuccessful connections and retransmitted data. Thiswill help to ensure the stability of the global Internet.

Examples of detected problems:

o TCPs that retransmit all unacknowledged data at a single time. This behavior greatly adds to Internet load, at a time when the network is already under stress. The combination can lead to congestion collapse.

o TCPs that misinitialize the congestion window, leading to potentially enormous bursts of traffic when new connections begin. Such burstiness can greatly stress Internet routers.

In the BOF, it was generally agreed that problems of this class needto be fixed.

Scope:

The scope of this group must be carefully defined in order to ensuretimely progress. To this end, TCP issues that still remain areas ofresearch are considered out of scope for the WG. For example newimprovements in congestion control algorithms are not within the WGscope. The WG will solicit input from the End-To-End research group ofthe IRTF on questions of whether a TCP implementation issue isconsidered research.

The major objectives of this group will be to :

Produce a compilation of known problems and their solutions. This willraise awareness of these issues.

Determine if any problems found are the result of ambiguities in theTCP specification. If necessary, produce a document which clarifiesthe specification.

Catalog existing TCP test suites, diagnostic tools, testingorganizations, and procedures that can be used by implementors toimprove their code, and produce a document enumerating them.

Milestones

Date

Milestone

Done

Conclude Working Group

Done

submit Internet-Draft on problems with Path MTU discovery to IESG for publication as an Informational RFC

Done

Submit revision of RFC 2001 to IESG for publication as Proposed Standard. Most likely this will include changes to the initial window, reflecting experienced gained with the Experimental initial window RFC. May include changes to restart-after-idle behavior

Done

Submit problems and fixes document to IESG for consideration as an Informational RFC.

Done

Submit revised version of problems and fixes as an Internet-Draft.

Done

Begin work on a security problems document (to be much like the known problems I-D currently being developed).

Done

Begin work on revisions to RFC 2001.

Done

Submit I-Ds in support of larger initial window I-D to IESG for consideration as an Informational RFCs

Done

Submit Internet-Draft of test catalogue to IESG for consideration as an informational RFC.